GRHS paraprofessional ready to retire

GLEN RIDGE, NJ — A school district employee for 20 years, paraprofessional Arleen Zalewski is retiring after 15 years at Glen Ridge High School.

Zalewski grew up in Clifton and attended Stockton State College where she received a bachelor of arts in fine arts. Like others holding that degree, she did not know what direction to take.
“As soon as I got out of the gate, I immediately made a left turn,” she said last week at the high school. “Jobs were difficult to find and maybe I hadn’t thought it through enough.”

But Clifton Public Library, where she worked for a summer, was starting an arts and crafts program.
She enjoyed the experience and decided to attend Fairleigh Dickinson University for Montessori training. She worked at that, in Verona, until a friend directed her toward a Montclair graphics design office needing a manager. The man she would marry was also in the arts, as a corporate photographer. They moved to Glen Ridge, had a daughter, Wynne, and after a company downsizing, her husband, Paul, took the leap and opened a photo business with his wife assisting.

“I was back of house,” she said. “I did all the bookkeeping and we had our business for over 25 years.”
But she also needed another job that would keep her in Glen Ridge with a schedule compatible to a mother. There was an opening at Forest Avenue School as a kindergarten aide that would fill the bill.
“That job kind of spoke to me and I loved it,” she said. “But I was only there for a year. They had hired me for a ‘bubble class.’ When that class moved to the first grade, I was transferred to Ridgewood Avenue School.”

At Ridgewood, she worked in the office of student services and covered for teachers attending meetings.

“I didn’t get a teacher’s certificate because I felt pulled,” Zalewski said. “I had a business already and would have to start at square No. 1.”
Five years later, she said there was a restructuring at the school and she was offered a part-time paraprofessional position.

“But I learned there was a full-time opening at the high school,” she said.
Rising health care costs made the move to GRHS practical. It was a great opportunity, she said, but only lasted a year.

In 2008, because of the financial crisis, Glen Ridge made staffing cuts and all aide positions became part-time. Zalewski lost her salary and benefits, but stayed on. She liked working at the high school.

“Obamacare made things better for people in my position and my daughter was getting ready for college,” she said. “As you get older, it becomes more difficult to reinvent yourself. My husband and I wanted the best for our daughter. She flourished in Glen Ridge. So, it wasn’t such a hardship not having a fancy car or remodeled kitchen. And we were members of the Glen Ridge Congregational Church. My daughter could go to the library after school, go to choir practice after school,” she said. “I really believe it takes a village. Thank you, Hillary!”

As a paraprofessional, Zelewski said her life experiences benefitted the children and she thought hard about what teachers impressed upon her, that the individual has a responsibility to their community.
“I had a unique position as a paraprofessional,” she said. “In those quiet moments, when a teacher is in front of the classroom, there is no substitute for the human connection.”
She said her father was a tremendous influence for her.

“He was quiet, gentle and a very likable man,” she said. “His father was a tailor and my father trained for it. He didn’t pursue it, but he was a very creative man.

“Most of what I remember, growing up, we’d be asleep and I could hear him doing Morse Code, communicating with other people in other parts of the world,” she continued. “That was his hobby.”
Her father also made curtains, built things in the basement and worked in the garden.

“He was very good visually,” she said. “He had an eye for decorating. My mother thought he was the bee’s knees. He looked at things in out-of-the-box ways, always reading The New York Times. He was quiet, but lovely. He died at 60. I remember these things keenly and they affect me profoundly. It made me realize you have to live in the moment.”

Zalewski said she is concerned that children today are overly distracted by technology; that they think they can multitask but in reality are not getting the half of it. She is retiring now because she feels she has accomplished all she wanted to do in her position.

“And believe it or not, I think there’s time for Arleen to paint and draw and discover things,” she said.